Game of Thrones Hope Chest: what’s Bran Stark’s ultimate role in the story?

Game of Throneshas never been about giving readers or viewers what they most want. Its author and screenwriters prefer to build fan expectations, then overturn them for narrative impact — and sometimes for pure shock value. And yet we fans maintain hope that at least a few of the characters will reach a satisfying, well-deserved ending. That’s why there’s Game of Thrones Hope Chest, a new weekly poll where we put all our hopes together in one place. We aren’t asking what you think is going to happen on Game of Thrones, we’re asking: what do you most hope to see happen?

One spoiler ahead for season 7, episode 3, “The Queen’s Justice”

This week, we’re looking at Brandon Stark, who starts Game of Thrones as an overeager kid who likes to climb things, permanently loses the use of his legs in the pilot episode, and spends the next six seasons on an increasingly strange vision quest. Having been hauled all over Westeros by a team of human sled dogs, he finally completed his six-season journey and made it safely back home to Winterfell in last week’s episode, “The Queen’s Justice.” As he tells his sister Sansa, he’s become the Three-Eyed Raven — which is to say he has a mystic title now, and the infuriatingly vague, symbolic speech habits to go with it.

He also has a wide variety of powers, which have inspired some of the meatiest fan theories in the entire series. (And a rash of “Is Bran Stark the most important character on Game of Thrones?” articles and debates.) He can not only see into the past and the future, he can actually affect things in the past, interfering with time itself. He can possess living creatures, he can see anything happening in the present anywhere, and he can confuse the hell out of people by answering their really sensible questions in the most unhelpful ways possible. He’s probably the only living person in the series who actually knows the secret of Jon Snow’s actual parentage.

All of which has given rise to some wild ideas about what he might do before the show is over, either to turn the tide against the Night King (who is aware of him, hunting him, and capable of interacting with his psychic projection), or to bring disaster on the story by bringing some meaningful historical threads together. Every time on this list is something internet pundits have theorized he might do before the story is over. (Except that last one. That’s just me.) Which of these would you find most satisfying as a culmination of Bran’s story arc?

Poll

Which of these would be the most satisfying thing for Bran to do before Game of Thrones ends?

Reveal Jon Snow’s parentage, putting him in line for the Iron Throne

Reveal his knowledge of the White Walkers’ creation, so the process can be reversed

Skinchange into one of the dragons in a key battle, turning the tide for his side

Travel back in time and keep the White Walkers from being created in the first place

Travel back in time to become Bran the Builder, the creator of the Wall